Leadership, Mental States & Buddha’s Middle Way

One of the Buddha’s most mysterious statements was this: “Preceded by perception are mental states, for them is perception supreme.”  What did he mean by this and why does it matter to leaders wanting to offer transformational leadership?  This short article explains.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine you are a guest at a European Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona and you’re a neutral – you don’t have strong feelings for either side.  Imagine too that you have Manchester United supporters to your left and Barcelona supporters to your right.

Now let’s say this is a closely contested final with both teams playing well, the score is 0-0 and it’s the 92nd minute with only one extra minute to play.  Now imagine that Lionel Messi of Barcelona dribbles through the United defence to score a brilliant solo goal – and there’s no question of a foul or off-side.

What would the Manchester United supporters be feeling at the moment he scored?  Chances are they’d feel despondent.  And how would the Barcelona supporters feel?  Probably ecstatic.

Now note what’s just happened in this thought experiment.  You’ve witnessed an identical physical event (Lionel Messi scoring a goal) followed by two opposing emotional reactions.  Why does the same event cause two different reactions?

The answer is that the two sets of supporters see the same physical event differently, causing a different emotional response.  In other words, their differing perceptions have driven their opposite responses.  But what drove their perceptions?

Unravelling Buddha’s Mysterious Statement

Going back to the Buddha’s statement, can you see that it was their mental states that controlled their perceptions?  In other words, their thoughts – their evaluation of the goal’s significance.

So the Manchester United supporters were probably thinking, “Oh no, we’re going to lose, we don’t have enough time to equalise.”  But the Barcelona supporters would be thinking, “That’s it, we’re going to win, they’ve only got 60 seconds to get the equaliser, it’s not going happen.”  Both had interpreted the meaning of the goal differently and this drove the opposite emotional reactions.

Going Deeper

But let’s go deeper.  Ask yourself, what drives those thoughts, those interpretations?  The answer?  Beliefs in higher mental mind.  Now here I need to explain something…

There are two levels to what I call “mental mind” in the new model of the psyche I present in chapter 8 of my book, The Three Levels of Leadership.

The lower level is the one producing the thoughts just described – thoughts representing the supporters’ evaluation of what’s just happened.

The higher level is what’s causing these thoughts.  You see, in higher mental mind, we hold our most subtle, fundamental and powerful beliefs about the world and our self-identity (or self-image).  These are “I am…” beliefs.  Thus, one supporter holds the belief, “I am a Manchester United supporter.”  And it’s this self-identity belief that drives his mental state, his evaluation of what’s happened.  Similarly, it is the Barcelona supporter’s belief (“I am a Barcelona supporter”) that decides his different view of the same event.

So our mental states drive our perceptions, but our mental states are controlled by how we define ourselves.  In other words, by the self-identity (self-image) we create for ourselves.

Why Does This Matter in Leadership?

It matters because if leaders aren’t aware that how they see themselves is limiting how they see problems, events and other people, it will be harder to find the solutions our world needs.  Think of the global financial crisis, for example.

So if, for example, a US politician defines himself as a Democrat or Republican – or a British politician sees herself as Labour or Conservative – can you see that this immediately limits how they see and define an event, problem or person?  And can you see that it will govern what they’re prepared to consider as a solution?  And that it will also determine what goals they choose to pursue?

Now the Buddha taught that we should strive to find a middle way.  But by that he didn’t mean we should find a compromise between two dualistic opposites.  He was instead telling us to see beyond the idea of pairs of opposites by questioning our self-identity, our self-image.

For after all, our self-identity isn’t some absolute truth, it’s just a mental creation – a mental creation everyone changes from time to time, but usually without realising it.  It doesn’t have to be set in stone.  By refusing to get caught in fixed, limiting self-identities we can transcend the idea that there have to be opposites (e.g. Democrats vs. Republicans, Labour vs. Conservatives, Capitalism vs. Communism) and that we have to see all challenges through these mental filters.

When this happens, we can view old problems afresh, giving us the chance to see new answers for the first time.  That’s when breakthrough solutions to major challenges like the global financial crisis can emerge.

An Example

Here’s an example.  If you think back to the early-mid 1990s, Microsoft could have got caught in the mindset that the choice it was facing on their MS-DOS operating system was essentially “small, steady incremental improvements versus massive, rapid improvements.”  Instead, by looking at their challenge from a new perspective, they transcended this mindset by developing Windows, a revolutionary way of making a computer user’s life easier.  They stopped developing MS-DOS and focused on something else; something that would make MS-DOS irrelevant to most users.  That was an act of great leadership.

This shift wouldn’t have been possible if the software engineers and Microsoft leaders had seen themselves (their self-identity) as “developers of MS-DOS.”  Perhaps they defined their identities as “creators of the easiest-to-use interfaces anyone can imagine.”  Whatever their collective self-identity was, they didn’t confine it to MS-DOS – that’s the point.  And by shifting their self-identity new possibilities came into view.

Longing for Genuine, Insightful Leadership

As we face our biggest international problems, like the financial crisis, millions of people around the world now sense that we must get beyond old, tired pairs of opposites that offer us only false choices and intellectual logjams.  But they can’t see how to do so.  That’s because they are locked into old self-identities and worldviews.

Key Messages

So what are the key messages here?  There are two:

First, our mental states drive our perceptions, but our mental states are controlled by how we define ourselves.  Second, if leaders transcend their old rigid self-identities they can get beyond unhelpful limiting pairs of opposites (false choices) and see new solutions to old problems.  In this way, they can offer the genuine transformational leadership the world needs so badly.

What is the process of moving beyond our old limiting self-identity?  It is self-mastery; which is one of the key themes of The Three Levels of Leadership.